@ crumbsyour questions are interesting. they fall short of assertiveness insofar as their answerer must stake some assertions. and the moment i,or any answerer of your questions, assert something, your questions puzzle that statement by shedding the question-drape and becoming counter-assertions. (dont know if im making sense, still this is the closest i can get to it)notwithstanding this, let me answer: past is both a fancy that a person consciously creates, and an intangible magma of expriences-till-now over which s/he cannot have any conscious command. selected and hierarchised memories occupy the created fancied past. the other memories are not absent; they are on the frills, always ready to edge in - say, in dreams. the space that is made or wishfully owned is a past - "that keeps us sane and alive." the other one, the looming intangible mire of experience, with no sense of priority or hierarchy whatsoever, is what defines madness - and death.

most my questions are a result of a lot confused contemplation, and mostly, because I can't find some satisfactory answers to them.your answer is very clearly put...and don't you think that it is these undefined, unstructured memories are what make our life what it is...we go through life with this pretense of being well adjusted and unperturbed, when suddenly these memories that were hiding in some dark shady corner of the sub-conscious surface, and we are forced to look at life in the eye...and that, changes us, and our concept of life again...

thanks arun, for pointing to me, towards a different tangent through your reply